What You Don't See

You get your kid out of bed in the morning. Maybe they slept well. Maybe they didn't. But I can pretty much guarantee they didn't get tangled in a feeding tube while they slept.

You make them breakfast. Maybe they eat it. Maybe they don't. But I'm pretty sure you didn't mix an amino-acid-based formula and pump it down a nasogastric tube.

You probably looked at their face and didn't think anything of it. But that's not how my morning started. It never is. Seeing my baby's face is never how it starts.

We'd had a good week with Frankie. And by good I mean she was still vomiting every...single...day. But the vomits were small and a clear fluid rather than milk. They were 5ml instead of 45ml. And honestly, the bar is so low, that's what we've come to call a good week.

The last few days however, we were back to catching huge vomits in mugs, or plastic containers, or toy-stacking-cubes or whatever else was laying around. Or missing the vomit altogether. And a helluva lot of laundry. We decided to change Frankie's tape, push the tube in a little further, and see if that helped the vomiting.

As such, my morning went a little like this:

* Remove top layer of tape, much to Frankie's dismay. You'd think she'd be used to it by now but she still screams and thrashes at the sight of the removal wipes.

* Push tube further in. This has become normal to us but, as I write it, shoving a piece of plastic tubing further down your kid's throat probably isn't very normal.

* Re-tape the tube in place while Frankie continued to cry. * Calm her down. * Set up the pump so formula can slowly get pushed down the tube. * Have the entire feed vomited back up. Everywhere. * Pump additional formula down the tube.

By that stage, the newly applied tape was hanging off and pulling the under-layer of tape off with it leaving behind red-raw skin underneath. * Lay an already upset and exhausted baby down, remove two layers of tape, millimetre by millimetre to try and protect her delicate skin, while the crying escalated. * Decide her skin was simply too raw to reapply tape over.

* Yank the tube out and endure more, completely justified, crying. * Huge vomit. Everywhere. * Apply one layer of tape to the other cheek. More screaming. * Thread 28cm of tubing up her nose, down her throat and into her stomach. * Another layer of tape. More crying.

And then begin the day. And go about life like nothing happened. Catch vomit. Make sure she naps. Bathe her. Do all the other toddler things. Catch more vomit. Watch her smile despite it all.

And nobody would even know what our morning looked like. Nobody will ever know the trauma we, and she, endures daily.